The situation: my 2 virtual nodes are fully operational, but after 24 days not earning period one of the nodes got rewards 2 times and again it’s not been earning for 10 days already!

And there’s a statement I discovered:

There are 1500+ nodes and something like 80 slots that can be filled.
Incognito has the others lock with their own nodes.
This should be clarified by you guys, the incognito team.
If you are flooding the network with more nodes but not opening up more slots what’s our APR (APY) should be then?

The two quotes below provide clarity from the team. From my understanding the fixed team nodes are in place to help secure the network as it grows…if there are not enough nodes on the network there could be issues.

We originally anticipated that we could remove the fixed nodes within 3-6 months of minimum viable mainnet launch. This is now delayed until April 2021. The main dependencies are Consensus v2 (Nov 2020), Dynamic Committee Size (Dec 2020), and Randomness v2 (Apr 2021). Without these components in place, there is a huge risk to network stability.

As the network scales, however — there will be more shards that support more validators, and all slots will be eventually released to the community. The 80 slots currently available will steadily increase to 16,384 slots. The first big push to scale the network will occur with the Highway implementation in early 2020.

There are only 80 slots because the fixed team nodes occupy the other slots. They clearly say the fixed team slots won’t be removed until April 2021.

The highway implementation needs to be complete for an increase in shards. There could be other factors needed for an increase in shards I’m unaware of.

I would rather the team side on the err of caution when it comes to securing the network rather than pushing forward before things are properly vetted and ready. Building always takes longer than people project it will especially in the startup world when software is involved.

The core team owns only pre-mined tokens, 80% of which are locked. PRV from fixed nodes are used to fund development projects from the core team as well as the community (see the DAO category on the site), fund initiatives (like pDEX mining or community rewards), pay server costs to run these fixed nodes, marketing and partnership activities, etc.

On the one hand your words make a great sense, that’s true, security should be prioritized.

But another hand reality that appears in scaling now for more newly nodes added hurts claimed APR. Incognito nodes are not any kind of investors that get stakes (1750 PRV) with discounts or eligibility for futher bonuses. So the solution to add more nodes without any manageable measurements for returns can lead to a big bounce.
IMO ppl can revert joining to quitting if nodes won’t bring them at least 0 losses returns which means balance btw paid compute power and joining fee of ~$1400 now.

The only problem I see with this, is that PRV earnings will go down over time as more nodes come online, but if PRV value is increasing that may offset…

But even if I look at my averages over the life of vNodes I have been running, depending on how long I take those averages back it could still be misrepresenting what someone who gets one right now would be earning.

It is difficult to have these static post be good resources for new pNode owners, since PRV price, number of nodes (even shards and spots), will be changing over time. The tool could be useful, but only if it was able to adjust those averages to show a moving average, or something similar.

IMO ppl can revert joining to quitting if nodes won’t bring them at least 0 losses returns which means balance btw paid compute power and joining fee of ~$1400 now.

That’s the point: IMO ppl can revert joining to quitting if nodes won’t bring them at least 0 losses returns which means balance btw paid compute power and joining fee of ~$1400 now.

I feel like you didn’t get my message . I’m concerning about that above - about quitting.

In your your pointing me to jserver, @andrey, you should understand that the decision to jump on their servers was forced by actual price for 4CPU server on Vultr or other vps.
And that decision hurts me as a true decentralization believer! I wanted to run my node myself and I can even agree get 0 balance for years while the protocol I see power in is building important things.
Hope you understand this.

Hey @nickvasilich,
I get what you’re saying. If there are only 80 slots and 1500 validators, earnings go down. And, that means it’s harder to make your investment back as a validator, especially when you pay for VPS hosting. That can hurt validators.

Rest assured, we have all thought about it. More discussion is always welcome, just know this:

There is a plan to increase slots by April 2021, when we’ve completed consensus v2, randomness v2, etc, less than a year away. Slots per shard will increase, and number of shards will increase. Soon enough, there will be more than 16,000 available slots, and probably not enough validators. So we have to work as hard as we can to bring as many validators as we can by that time.

Slots cycle, so the number isn’t the only important thing. It depends how fast the epochs pass by, and how many transactions there are to process. With more transactions, validators will earn more. And the team isn’t just focused on adding validators, they’re working hard to increase transaction and trading volume too.

If the VPS server is too expensive, there are much less expensive options available, and you don’t have to use JServers if you don’t want. Contabo or any other works as well.

It can be frustrating now, but you will earn even before we add slots. And you can stop being a validator now, and come back when slots open up, but you’ll miss out in the meantime. I don’t like to focus on this, but if PRV price were to continue to increase, being a validator as that happens would be great. Now, I am 100% certain price will also go down as well. So it’s up to you whether you unstake. I personally wouldn’t, but I can see why one would. If I did, I’d at least hang on to the PRV needed to stake. Who knows what it would cost to stake 1750 later. Maybe more, maybe less.

Anyway, that’s the info I have. There are no guarantees, and I’m not suggesting you take a certain course of action, but hopefully some of that info was helpful.

More nodes is better for the chain once the fixed slots are removed. In December we only had 800 validators, so even if half of them leave now it’s sad, but not going to destroy the network. That’s one of many reasons for fixed slots.